Projects

The Ruarts Foundation presents ‘Omnia mutantur’, a solo exhibition by Natalia Menyakina. ‘Omnia mutantur, nihil interit’ — ‘Everything changes, nothing perishes’ — an ancient maxim tracing back to Pythagoras and later formulated by Ovid in his ‘Metamorphoses’, serves as the key to a new project by this interdisciplinary artist.

Natalia explores the phenomenon of transformation as a fundamental state of contemporary existence. The exhibition seeks to make visible transitions that typically occur within the unconscious: from idealisation to dependency, and from the disintegration of identity to its rebirth. The personal and the collective, the physical and the mental, the natural and the technological engage in a ceaseless exchange of forms and meanings.

In the artist’s work, manual craftsmanship and digital technologies merge into multi-layered, almost baroque structures where ornamentation sits alongside biological mutation, and the image constantly eludes final definition. Recurring motifs such as eyes, organs, hybrid creatures, plants and patterns multiply across reflective surfaces. Visual exuberance is a hallmark of Menyakina’s practice; mirrors within the exhibition amplify this effect, as a reminder of the need for a continuous dialogue with one’s own inner form.

The conceptual heart of the project is the ‘Terrae Novae’ (Latin for ‘new worlds’) series, work on which began in 2022. It is here that transformation is most clearly manifested. "If the space within the frame is safe and comfortable, then the space outside the frame is transformative and uncharted, promising us growth and development," says the artist. The entire ‘OMNIA MUTANTUR’ project grew out of this series; the artist’s new works are, in one way or another, the ‘offspring’ of ‘Terrae Novae’, part of a vast ecosystem.

Natalia Menyakina’s practice resonates with the contemporary artistic trends of recent years, including the perspective of the Venice Biennale, which place special emphasis on hybrid forms, the reinterpretation of canonical imagery, the intersection of the handmade and the digital, and the return of tactility in an age of virtual imagery.

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Natalia Menyakina (b. 1992 in Saratov) is an interdisciplinary artist. She holds a degree in architecture from the Yuri Gagarin State Technical University of Saratov. She is an alumna of the Joseph Backstein Institute of Contemporary Art (2024–2026) and the MMOMA Free Workshops programme (2023–2024). From 2001 to 2013 she was actively engaged in painting and graphics. In 2011 she turned to photography, gradually incorporating collage into her work. Since 2018 collage and video art, into which she integrates her own photographs and paintings, have become her primary media. She has also been working with installation art since 2023. Natalia delves into themes where psychology and aesthetics intertwine. The grotesque nature of her subjects, a vibrant colour palette, decorative qualities and visual excess all work in concert to gradually immerse the viewer in a ‘trance-like’ state, building a ‘bridge’ to their unconscious.